About Shelmar Kennels

Dog Trainer Martin Bell

One of the best, Martin Bell is a dog trainer Houston, and a dog behavior specialist.

Martin and Shelly Bell, owners and operators of Shelmar Kennels, are the people to call when you need dog trainers in Houston. Learn more about Martin and Shelmar Kennels through the following personal story:

Martin Bell – Katy TX – July – 2019

My love of great dogs started early. I learned to expect the finer things from a dog and that is the tradition we continue here today. Our dogs at Shelmar Kennels follow that philosophy; we develop in dogs a willingness to please and a desire to be trained.

Shelly and I founded Shelmar Kennels 18 years ago. Our lives have gone through changes, as has our business. I no longer train field trial dogs for clients, preferring to spend quality time with the 3 dogs that belong to me and stay close to home obedience training dogs for Katy and Houston residents. I still fly to field trials to compete 3 or 4 times a year but mainly to spend time with old friends.

I have found myself more successful with just a couple of my own dogs. In 2007 I trained and ran the high point dog in the US. Her record of 10 starts earning 8 wins and a second, being beaten only by her kennel mate, will be difficult to duplicate.

National Field Trial Champion – Lucy – NFC FC Shelmar’s Rudh Lowarn

‘Lucy’ also won the National Championships in 2008 in Montana – the only trial she ran that year. After such a great career – I decided to retire her at only 2 ½ years old, and gave her to my mum…(she now lives on the couch in the lap of luxury!!)

That’s when I really turned to Obedience training for all breeds and I have been having fun training all these different breeds and interacting with so many owners and different owner personalities.

Dog behavior problem solving, and helping people genuinely in need with errant dogs, has given me a newfound satisfaction in dog training. Teaching dog owners has become as interesting as teaching dogs. I have always been a firm believer in education and I surround myself with the best people (and dogs!) in the business.

Here at Shelmar kennels we will take the Pepsi challenge against anyone. Shelly and I do all the training ourselves we don’t rely on hired trainers to handle and train your dog. You get us, we work hard on all the dogs that come through Shelmar Kennels and, until publishing this new website with our obedience programs in detail, we have always been 100% referral from satisfied customers and veterinarians who have seen first hand the difference we can make in your life between you and your dog.

Below is my story, how I got from Rural England to Texas, riding on my ability to train dogs and some of the people and dogs that helped me along the way. Read on if it interests you. It’s mostly a collection of dog stories that have molded me into the dog trainer I am today.

I started my hunting and dog life early, chasing Woodcock in the swamps and wet spots around Cornwall, England with my Dad. The perfect dog for this job was a spaniel. As a youngster my Dad and Granddad had various sorts of poorly backyard-bred Springer’s. They were huge dogs with tight wavy coats, poor in temperament but hard hunters, best suited to a kennel life.

My uncle was a fisherman/poacher in the fishing village of Flushing. A famous trialer vacationing in a local cottage promised him a puppy in exchange for oysters, which he picked fresh everyday from the oyster beds. The following year the trainer appeared with a Springer pup named Tally. She was the first dog I had seen that could do it all.

Tally was completely natural she had no formal training at all but could handle on a dime and she had an unbelievable nose, a desire to please and a willingness to just ‘be’ with you. My dad took a pup from her first litter that we named Dell.

When Dell was of age my Dad started training her. The only hurdle was retrieving to hand. She loved to retrieve but she would circle on delivery. Dad corrected her problem by throwing retrieves into a tidal creek. Dell was a strong swimmer and would glide out and back, the slow current forcing her to come into hand and then onto the bank.

That turned out to be my first lesson in outsmarting, not forcing, when training a dog.

Once Dell had that sorted out she was an absolute dream to train. Her first flush on live game was a Sunday morning walk/hunt/training session in the early summer.

Late for breakfast as usual, Dad and I were crossing a Cornish granite hedge, maybe 100 years old and as knurly and overgrown as a hedge can get. All that raw natural ability in Dell told her to tear through that bramble and blackthorn. A Cock Pheasant hid in the bottom of the bramble.

20 walkers a day would walk past him without knowing. Not anymore! He exploded out and glided off 400 yards before settling, then preceded to run half a mile across a ploughed field. That hedge would not be a safe place any longer!

Through the summer, the rabbit population also found out that they had better stay sharp. Her hunting was always classy and stylish and she always had a natural pattern in any wind. But my father had always had a hard hunting dog; he gave them lots of practice shooting most weekends. All of his dogs had been poor retrievers. Bingo ( a Jack Russell terrorist!) you had to beat to the bird if you wanted anything left to eat. Curly and Ben had little interest in retrieving anything; they simply wanted to carry on hunting.They were not stylish but very efficient at finding game.

Dell changed all that. She had a superior nose but hunted with you, not away from you, and she could retrieve. Not only could she retrieve but, wow, what a retriever she was. Dad had taught her to handle, and she would go anywhere.

I once shot 26 teal at morning flight with a single barrel 20 gauge on Devoran Banks, a tidal wash marsh that rose and fell with the tide 8 feet a day. I stood in a stand of cattails and shot them coming up the river crossing left to right. They were flying in the middle of the now flooding river and Dell made every retrieve one after the other in cold water. When I got home I thought Dad was going to kill me for tiring out his dog. After retrieving 26 teal, while I peddled my bike, she jogged alongside me the 4 miles home. She was talented and tough. She gave me the love of a great one.

The next dog I purchased was Dan, another well bred trialing type dog out of a Field Trial Champion dog. I was 17 years old and head keeper of a partridge shoot with abundant game. Dan was my only workhorse and he excelled at Partridge. I picked up thousands of Ducks and Pheasants with him at formal driven shoots, but a running partridge is where he excelled. He would disappear on the line and then show up 3 fields away with a crippled bird.

I got my first real education in dog training because I was fortunate to grow up 3 miles down the road from the famous field trialer Hedley Millington of Nancarrow Gundogs.

Martin and Hedley with Martin’s Champions – FC Spice – FC Trouble – FC Riley

Never having been a bashful kid I knocked on his door one Saturday afternoon and asked if I